Love is the Law/ The Three Graces – 90×160 cm – Acrylic on Capulana – 2019
INT. LOCAL CAFÉ – NIGHT
FADE IN FROM BLACK
Two gentlemen drink a cup of tea overlooking the corner of Julius Nyerere and 24 de Julho.
ANDY
I noticed you speak differently about this painting than the others.
JORGE
How do you mean?
ANDY
Well, even your body language is different. Your voice becomes soft and emotional. Normally you explain the process and speak a lot about the ideas behind your paintings. But with this one, there is something special. It’s like you have a deep emotional attachment to one of the women of the piece.
JORGE
You are correct. The one on the left is my sister.
ANDY
But that’s not the whole story. You are hiding something and I know it.
JORGE
It’s something I did not intend but is now the main element of the piece.
ANDY
You’re being cryptic. That is just a trick, a wall you put up to block me. Stop it. You are a painter, you allowed to show emotion. People count on that.
JORGE
Okay okay. Just, let me speak. It’s indeed an emotionally charged piece.
ANDY
Finally.
JORGE
It’s about the one in the center, she’s a friend of my sister; Tassinha. The person on the right is unknown to me. My relation to her has been quite intimate in the past. We had been in a relationship and since she was one of my sister’s best friends she was practically family to me.
ANDY
What happened between you and her? Are you willing to share that?
JORGE
Just listen please.
At an exhibition in Gonçalo’s house I asked the public if they would participate in a performance. I had images of statues and they would have to pick one so as to imitate them. The statue of choice was ‘The Three Graces’, a marble copy of an ancient Greek one. These three ladies performed the scene in front of me so I could take a photograph of them. This was in 2013. Five years later I decided to base a painting on the photo.
This piece took me longer to finish than expected. During the painting process the fire kept growing. This was at the end of the year 2018 and it still wasn’t complete. On the first day of the new year Tassinha, the woman in the center, committed suicide by jumping off the sixth floor. She was close to my sister so I heard about it as soon as her partner called her to share the sad news. Later on the story hit the news and she was now at the center of every conversation in town.
ANDY
Dude, you have to share this piece with the world.
JORGE
Wait.
Hers was labeled a ‘passionate suicide’ because of reasons that are private, so I will not discuss them. Though we did not have a lot of contact around the times of her death, the times we did speak it was all good. It was my not my intention to make a sort of monument of her, of course, but this is what happened.
ANDY
This is relevant because Moçambique in Africa is a leading country in terms of the suicide rate, most of which are passionate.
JORGE
Yes, I found out. A lot of youth does this. Tragic really.
ANDY
You are not a psychologist or scientist, you’re a fine artist that focuses on painting, performance and comics. The advantage of your position is complete intellectual and aesthetic freedom. As artist you can jump into conclusions and make connections that no other field allows. Art sometimes must lie for the sake of truth and be truthful while presenting illusions.
JORGE
Yeah, I agree. But this was also a twist of fate, or a coincidence, or both.
ANDY
Do you believe in fate?
JORGE
I’m not sure. I do believe that time and space are illusions that our physical bodies insist on interpreting like time and space.
ANDY
I’m not sure what to make of that.
JORGE
It’s not relevant for now. There is another piece that deals with these things. The painting in question thought me a deep lesson about art and its relation to society. There are things about the process of the painting and its subliminal message that I can’t speak about. It showed me that there are forces or intentions at work that go beyond the material reality we can perceive.
ANDY
I should know.
JORGE
Another layer to the painting is that I have been through depression just like Tassinha. I know what it is to be suicidal. On top of that I know her so there is obviously a high level of empathy and compassion that I feel towards her. It is a terrible thing to wake up every morning and wishing you did not exist. It burns to see others have seemingly wonderful lives while you struggle with every breath. Appearances are deceiving indeed but a heart is not easy to control.
ANDY
I believe that you would never have made a painting about this subject on your own, right?
JORGE
You are right.
ANDY
Is that what you meant when you said that some things go beyond?
JORGE
Yes. When you create something that is supposed to be in the public view it’s not yours anymore. This means that all the forces and influences of life inhabit the piece. Unpredictability is part of that process. Faith or non-faith, what is important is content.
ANDY
Which is?
JORGE
That self-love and love for others is the law! That all graces, or virtues, come from a deep intimate love for life itself. This we must never forget but of course have forgotten long ago. Just look at our society, greed seems to be the law. Do you see the hopelessness in people’s eyes? Do you? It’s horrifying.
ANDY
Yes, I do. I really do.
JORGE
Even though the meaning or purpose of the painting was not intentional the title of it is. I intended to play with the situation of the painting itself. It is now a monument of Tassinha, okay, but what is the next step?
ANDY
What does that mean? I don’t understand.
JORGE
See, I know what and whom I speak of. At least, I think I do. That’s why I would insist on Love being the primary law.
ANDY
Do you speak in esoteric terms?
JORGE
Am I being cryptic again?
ANDY
Yes, very.
JORGE
Well, I believe that Love is the primary virtue of which all others spawn. From an object or a technology to groups of people; Love is the mentality that potentially harmonizes.
ANDY
As opposed to?
JORGE
Currently the mentality is ‘fight or flight’. I believe this is the base consciousness note, if you will, of the majority of urban citizens through no fault of their own. A society based on a Fiat Lux monetary system is bound to create winners and losers in a widening gap between the elite and the mass.
ANDY
Are you a Marxist?
JORGE
Really? It’s because I’m a Mozambican right? Funny. But no.
– Pauses –
Thing is, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we live our lives. When I say ‘we’ I am referring to the whole of humanity and especially the urban technological ones. The cyborgs. This is not a national problem because the influences on the citizens are not just global but universal. It is about the way we relate to ourselves and our reality. If we see society as a means of exploitation; we exploit it. If we see the same society as a garden that needs to be nurtured; we create miracles.
ANDY
That’s a very simple way to put it, but I might agree with you on it.
JORGE
Artistic license.
But you are right. Let’s look at it from a more clear perspective. It’s about co-creation of a mentality and its consequences. Let’s take a child, or rather a baby. If we exploit that baby, that human being, it will become an abusive exploitative person because that’s what it has been taught by example. If we raise the same human being to be a responsible entrepreneur by all means possible without abusive behavior something else happens. The shadows of trauma do not hang over this person’s life. Unfortunately many are subtly controlled by unresolved trauma experienced in the past. Many fear they do not have the means to realize their desired future. This feeds anxiety, depression, obsession, frustration and anger. A perfect recipe for addiction if you ask me. This creates a collective consciousness base rhythm that is tired indeed. One that feels that its pain and struggle is not recognized. What I’m trying to say, partly, is that we need to heal our society with love and therapy. Na’mean?
ANDY
That sounds like your job then.
JORGE
Funny. But I’m serious brah. People are dying. The way we think about ourselves and society has everything to do with it.
FADE TO BLACK